Dumontis

Building Autonomy in Continual Improvement

Muda

We often speak about the two pillars of the Toyota or Lean system, and when doing so we think of the two well-known pillars of just-in-time (JIT) and built-in quality (jidoka). JIT thereby focuses on manufacturing only the necessary products, at the necessary time, in the necessary quantity by deploying pull flow (kanban), one piece flow and leveling. Jidoka, built-in quality, or autonomation focuses on quality control by stopping the process when abnormalities are detected based upon elements such as standardized work and visual control. But is this correct? Where is “Respect for People” in all of this?(more…)

It seems to be popular these last years and more recently to explicitly state that Lean is not (only) about cost reduction or cost cutting. See the recent posts by Mark Graban or Matt Hrivnak. So let me be somewhat controversial in this post (which I think is allowed to spark the discussion) and drop a bombshell: I think Lean is about cost reduction.

Now I can’t of course argue with the interpretations that people may have when they read about cost reductions, and surely, generally it will have negative connotations. But it is interesting, still, to contrast these thoughts with the original ideas about what now is called Lean, by going back to what Toyota, Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo said and wrote about this topic in the period when the world first started learning about the Toyota Production System. Then when going back to the origins and the intent of the TPS, there clearly is strong focus on cost reduction. So how does this match up, one might wonder. A post trying to close the gap between cost reduction how it is often practiced, and understanding cost reduction as intended in Lean.(more…)

Waste. With all the attention for Lean nowadays, you would think that the discussion about waste would be concluded by now. Still, on the Internet, the debate about waste categories recently reared its head again. The most well-known acronyms that are used to indicate the categories of waste are TIMWOOD, NOWTIME, DOWNTIME and CLOSEDMITT. The thing that strikes me time and again is that most of these categories actually point at practices that lead to waste; the causes of waste. What is being wasted, however, apparently seems to be of less importance. But isn’t that just the point? Where does the waste of energy go, for instance, in most of these categories? In this post I break a lance for another approach in the hunt for waste; the one from the point of view of available resources.(more…)